Letty Schamp, the city of Hilliard's capital improvements project and transportation engineer said work on the Main Street improvement project should wrap up soon.

Work on the streetscape project began in March and Schamp said construction is expected to be complete close to the Oct. 31 target completion date.

"We should meet that date pretty close," Schamp said. "We have some delivery of materials that aren't expected until early November, so, realistically, we're looking at mid-November, but I think folks will see it pretty much wrapped up in the next four weeks or so."

Schamp said some finishing touches need to be done to sidewalks on the east side of Main Street, railings need to be installed around the new landscape pits and three gateway entrance arches will be installed near the Dairy Queen, Center Street and the new Norwich Township/Hilliard Joint Safety Services Building at the Franklin County Fairgrounds.

"They look really sharp." Schamp said of the gateway arches. "They're bricked up and they have limestone medallions on them and they have an 'H' engraved into them. They're really nice."

Schamp said the bid cost for the streetscape project was $3.215-million and about $100,000 worth of change orders on the project have put the final cost at about $3.3-million.

"We were really wanting to create a public space in the right of way that better accommodated pedestrians for more foot traffic," she said. "We wanted this to start the process of bring more people into Old Hilliard."

She said equally important were some much needed infrastructure repairs.

"We wanted to reconstruct the street," Schamp said. "The curbs were in bad condition. Some of the pavement was in bad condition. It was an engineering project but it was much more than that."

Schamp said a lot of street trees had to be removed during construction but they were all ash trees endangered by the emerald ash borer, so those had to be replaced, anyway.

"We're doing all new landscaping," she said.

A unique part of the streetscape are bump-outs strategically placed near intersections.

"The idea behind that was to not only create additional sidewalk width space to make it a more comfortable pedestrian environment, but it shortens up those pedestrian crossings and makes it more pedestrian friendly. It also tends to have the effect of slowing traffic down a little. That wasn't our specific goal but I think it's one of those things that create an added benefit. For this particular project we wanted the needs of pedestrians to outweigh those of larger vehicles."

In addition to new landscaping and sidewalks, Schamp said decorative street lights will be added similar to those installed during the Norwich Street reconstruction project.

Schamp said that she realized the 7-month construction period was an inconvenience for Old Hilliard businesses but that in the long run it will be a benefit.

"We want Old Hilliard to become much more of a gathering place," she said. "We want it to be a public space for people to come and that it provides some impetus for business redevelopment and investment in private property. The city has invested a lot of money between Norwich Street and Main Street and our future parks projects in the next couple of years that we are going to be doing there."